


But when I am Grown Up, will somebody Love Me?

by likehandlingroses



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Developing Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Flirting, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Through the Years, thomas pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22683298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likehandlingroses/pseuds/likehandlingroses
Summary: Thomas spent his youth playing with love and life as if they were game pieces--with every expectation that he might win.He is less sure now.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Comments: 61
Kudos: 162





	1. 1927

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from D.H. Lawrence's novel "The Rainbow." 
> 
> When I decide how many chapters this will be, I'll let you know! Probably only a handful in either direction: 3-5, I'm thinking.

The letters from Richard made him young all over again—tucking letters away at the table and pretending not to notice Miss Baxter’s smiling eyes. Reading them in the same bedroom, tucking them in the same drawer as before. Calling his favorite parts to mind during especially dull dinners, just as he had when he was a footman and avoiding Carson’s eye—Carson had hated anything resembling human feeling in the dining room. 

The phone calls were something new, but they too made him feel like a bright and bold young person, ringing up a sweetheart to hear their smile across the line. 

He’d forgotten how much he enjoyed it all—or perhaps he’d not enjoyed it as much fifteen years ago. Back when he’d tied his heart to his fortune and assumed that—even if the knot came untied—he was limber enough to parcel something else together. 

Those illusions were gone now—Thomas hadn’t been clever enough to weave together a perfect future out of odds and ends and empty promises. 

But he thought he might be clever enough, now, to accept an offer of happiness when it came. To tie it to no expectation, to let it sit still and hum against his chest while he went about his day as if nothing had changed. 

The London visit was Richard’s idea—a last minute opening that led to a hasty offer and eager acceptance. Thomas didn’t realize until he stepped on the train that he was now carrying a parcel, holding his happiness outside of himself for the first time since Richard had left him standing in the pantry, token in hand. 

No one had ever asked this of him, to visit especially, to determine that they should leave every other concern aside in order to spend time together. It meant something Thomas couldn’t place, and he felt, suddenly, too young for what lay before him. 

He caught a glimpse of himself in the train window—a hazy reflection that sat taller than him, and looked at once more pensive and less affected by the happenings around it. The smells and sounds of other passengers, the jolts and bounces of the train—that the well-groomed figure in the window sensed none of those things, Thomas could understand. 

But the figure’s face showed none of what Thomas felt—none of the childish nerves or clumsily soothed anxieties—its placidity made him turn forcefully away from the indistinct shadow and its smooth features. 

It didn’t look at all like him. 

Richard picked him up at the station, and hearing his smile wasn’t the same as seeing it again. 

“I got here early,” Richard said proudly while shaking his hand. Thomas knew him well enough to hear what it meant. 

Sometime in between Richard clicking the hotel door shut and the two of them settling into each other’s arms—sated but still curious—Thomas found that the humming in his chest had returned. On an impulse, he hummed along with it, eyes closed as Richard moved a hand through his hair. 

“You must be starving,” he murmured. 

“I was.” Thomas opened his eyes, grinning. “Then I forgot to be.”

He took Richard’s hand away from his tousled hair and kissed it. 

“And now?” There was a breathlessness in Richard’s voice that Thomas couldn’t help but encourage. He kissed his hand again, closer to the wrist and less chastely. 

“Are you?” he whispered. 

“Very.”

But there was no urgency in his voice, and Thomas supposed he’d have been just as happy to stay as they were for the rest of the evening. Legs tangled together, hands unable to find a singular place of rest on relentlessly warm and supple skin.

When they went to dinner—and they’d have to go to dinner—they’d put it all away again. His gloves would help Thomas pretend his hands were incurious, almost insensate. Richard would speak to the man at the pub in a voice that wasn’t quite his, and that would help, too.

He’d catch a glimpse in a shop window of a man that wasn’t him—certainly not him like he was now—and he might be able to manage dinner nicely. 

_‘And then we will come back here,’_ he hummed to himself, almost cheerful as he went to tucking away the recently dusted parts of himself. 

He couldn’t do it as neatly as Richard, who never really looked like he’d tucked anything away at all. Richard could swallow himself whole, be at once himself and someone else entirely. 

Then the man handing him his change asked a question Richard couldn’t think up an answer to, and he looked like no one at all. Eyes wide, like something that looked like it had just realized it was being hunted for sport. 

So something _ was _ tucked away, Thomas supposed. Deeper than Thomas could manage, deeper than anyone might guess. And when they came back to their room, he could feel it on Richard’s skin, in the way Richard’s touches came with more pressure, more purpose. 

Something deeper had poked its head out and spooked him. 

“He was only making conversation,” Thomas said softly. 

“Who?” Though even Richard couldn’t play it off as coyly as that. 

“The man in the pub.” Thomas ran a hand down his arm. “He was an idiot, too...even if he hadn’t been drinking on the job. There was no harm done.”

Richard didn’t seem so sure.

“I don’t know why I lost my nerve...”

“If that bloke walking past hadn’t tripped…” Some barely-twenty-something, drunk without knowing it, slurring together a thanks and an apology as Thomas caught him by the arm before he hit the floor. 

“He made you forget your lines,” Thomas teased before kissing Richard, who welcomed it eagerly, but cut it short. His brow was furrowed, and he studied Thomas before speaking. 

“Have you ever memorized something by heart, but then one time a small part of it gets mixed up? A little thing, a part of it that should be easy to pick up from...but then the whole of it’s gone, just like that? And you think...maybe it wasn’t memorized by heart, because you wouldn’t forget something written down there in such a hurry?”

Richard’s habit of turning a phrase, usually so clear and to the point, had lost Thomas along the way. If he meant to say that he wasn’t perfectly able to pretend every day of his life...well, then, who was? 

“We’re in service,” Thomas laughed. “We’re always one bad day for forgetting everything we ever learned.”

_ Because none of it matters _ —the unspoken end of the thought. 

It hadn’t always been unspoken—not for Thomas. He’d said it all the time, back when he thought that wanting not to care was the same as not caring, and that speaking something out loud made it someone else’s responsibility. 

He was more careful, now, to notice that his words landed back at his feet and demanded his explanation before they would take any other. Nowadays, he kept things unspoken, not because they weren’t true, but because he knew he couldn’t account for what that truth meant. 

The work he did didn’t matter. It was even and easy and he did it well. He even liked it, some days, more than he thought he’d like  _ doing _ anything else, day in and day out. 

But it still didn’t matter, and Thomas hadn’t yet decided what to do about it. 

Richard laughed easily, though his fingers still pressed into Thomas’s back, his left thumb tracing quick, steady circles into his skin. Thomas wondered if he should return the gesture—anchor him at both ends—but he liked the feel of Richard under the touch of light fingertips. Easy work, to make him smile. Easy and worthwhile. 

How often could he expect to find something like that? 

“I’m serious,” though the smile hadn’t left Richard’s face. “You turned your head a certain way when that man came tumbling over your lap, and all the rest went out the window.”

“The rest” being the things he’d thought he kept in his heart. Thomas shrugged off the feeling of expectation the words gave him, and he reached up to ruffle the hair at Richard’s temple.

“All the stuff you keep up here, you mean…” 

Richard seemed determined not to tease, and Thomas’s grin faltered as the expectation came back to the front of his mind. 

“The first night at Downton, I thought it must’ve been everyone’s eyes following you,” Richard said. “Mr. Barrow’s just that sort, I figured...because I’d forgotten how it felt to want something for myself.”

Thomas blinked. “Lucky for me you remembered.”

“You made it impossible not to.” Now that he’d gotten the main thing off of his chest, a glint was back in Richard’s eye. “And anyway, at some point...well, you stop finding excuses to generalize.”

He lifted his head off the pillow to kiss Thomas, one hand cupping his cheek. Thomas made to lean towards him, but there was no need—Richard seemed determined to stir something in Thomas without him lifting a finger. 

He wasn’t going to complain about _ that, _ he thought, relaxing back into the bed as Richard kissed along his jaw. 

“I don’t have people lining up to do this at Downton...” A stupid thing to say, but Richard’s laugh was good-natured. His hand hadn’t left Thomas’s face. 

“Not at  _ Downton…”  _

“You think I’m more exciting than I am,” Thomas murmured in between kisses. He didn’t know how he was ever to convince Richard that his outing in York was something between historic and miraculous. 

“Or you think you’re less exciting than you are. Seems more likely, as you’re living it and take it for granted.”

Thomas pulled him back from his lips with a gentle tug on his hair, marvelling at how Richard’s breath caught as he did. 

“Just because I excite _ you _ doesn’t mean I’m exciting,” he said, leaning up for a kiss that it took Richard a moment to return. He smiled against his mouth. “You’re generalizing again.”

“And you’re not modest.” Thomas could hear Richard’s smile, too. He pulled back just enough to see it. 

“Should I be?”

“Am I likely to say yes?”

That was enough, until they’d both had their say and their fill. It wasn’t until they were back to lazy limbs wrapped together, hearts settling down in spite of being curiously close to each other, that Thomas remembered how young he’d felt stepping onto the train, holding expectations he didn’t know what to do with.

He didn’t feel so young, now, and having expectations didn’t seem so daunting. 

You had to have  _ some, _ he supposed. 

“You only think I’m exciting because you’re fond of me,” he said, interrupting the quiet that had fallen over the room.

“Maybe I am.” Richard’s voice hummed in the ear Thomas had pressed to his chest. “Very fond.”

Thomas thought about lifting his head, but Richard’s hand against his hair stopped him from wanting to go anywhere for a good long while. 

“More than’s good for you.” 

“You’ve caught me out, then.” 

Thomas smiled against his skin. 


	2. 1930

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this Valentine's Day, so hopefully it's fittingly romantic and tender and all the rest!

“Suppose you can’t find another job?”

Thomas asked the simplest question first, though Richard’s idea had been mad from beginning to end. 

He wanted them to live together. Quit everything they did now—everything they’d done their whole lives—and live together in a place of their own. He was tired of the way things were, he said (and that had sent a chill up Thomas’s spine, though Richard didn’t seem to have meant it to land so harshly). 

“I’ll find one,” he said without hesitation. Thomas raised an eyebrow—he was still perched at the end of the bed, Richard standing in front of him. He’d spoken like a man who should have been pacing, but Richard wasn’t a pacer. 

Sometimes Thomas wished he was. Standing still made every word so targeted, so purposeful, and Thomas didn’t know if his heart could take such purpose all at once. It was doing plenty of pacing of its own, pounding in his chest. 

Richard gave a half-smile at Thomas’s look of incredulity. “What?”

Thomas feigned a smile of his own. “It’s just not like you. Going off course.”

Richard’s face turned serious again. “It’s not off course. Not for anyone else. I want to live like an adult—with my own place and my own life. My own family. Isn’t that what everyone at Downton is moving to do?”

He wasn’t wrong—most of the old guard had moved out. Many had moved on from service entirely, and no one—upstairs or down—blamed them. The world was changing. 

But Downton would always need a butler. That’s what Mr. Carson had said, and he’d been right. And how lucky for the house that Thomas would never have need of a home of his own. 

“They’re not like us,” Thomas said gruffly, looking down at the carpet. The room they’d rented was poorly maintained, though you wouldn’t know it from the cost. Thomas doubted anyone’d gone through with a proper cleaning in years. 

And he would know, wouldn’t he? Sometimes he thought that was all he knew—cleaning and mending and carpets and silver and wine and glass that had to sparkle because that’s what glass did in a proper house. And it didn’t really sparkle, not like water or snow or anything real. But you had to say that it did, and call it a job well done. 

Richard sat down beside him, taking his hand. 

“We wouldn’t be the first people like us to manage it,” he said. “If it’s what you want.”

Thomas closed his eyes. “Don’t make it about what I want. That’s not fair.”

As if he could want anything else. 

“What should it be about?”

Sometimes Thomas thought he was determined to be obtuse. 

“If it doesn’t work—”

“—we’d be safer in our own home than trying to come up with stories every three months,” Richard interrupted. Clearly, he’d tried to ease his own doubts with something more than what he _wanted._ “We’re getting into a pattern, and people start to notice those. Or you get the wrong man working the desk, and he calls the police. But if we got a place, it’d be one story. A set of neighbors to charm and two rooms to keep up, and then that’s it. We’d be part of the scenery in three months' time.”

He wasn’t wrong, of course, about them risking quite enough as it was. Still, Thomas had never known men like them to live in a settled state. It was quick nights (if you had a whole night) in beds that weren’t your own (if you had a bed), and then you counted yourself lucky for not getting caught. 

What he and Richard had was the best Thomas had ever dared hope for, though he felt just now as if he’d overestimated just how happy Richard was with the arrangement. 

And who could say what he’d decide to do about fixing it? 

“If it were that easy, we’d all do it.” 

“We’ve already worked through the hardest part, Thomas, and that’s finding someone in the first place.” 

The balm of Richard squeezing his hand and leaning into his side proved a short-lived comfort. 

“Aren’t you tired of this?” Richard asked, and though Thomas knew—he _knew—_ that the pointedness of his words wasn’t directed at _him_ , he bristled. 

“What kind of a question is that?” he said, sitting up straight and fixing Richard with a glare. “Of course I’m tired of it. I’ve been tired of it since I was fourteen. But there are things that can’t work, there are things we can’t have, and—and that’s flat.”

He hated the raggedness in his voice, but there wasn’t any helping it. Some things lived too deeply to be taken out without some tears, and the life Thomas had always known he couldn’t have was one of those things. It came wrapped in a shell of bitterness, and that shell broke with the pressure of coming to the surface, leaving shards strewn across the room. 

He hated being that way; he tried to forget, most days, that he was that sort of person anymore. That he was content, and contentment was nice. Good. A job well done. 

But it was just polishing and scrubbing and placing things in the right place so you couldn’t see the stains that wouldn’t come out. Richard had a habit of moving things around in Thomas, and it meant that nothing could hide for long before he found it. Thomas—ten to one—felt more relief than anything when Richard discovered something, when it had been turned in hand and placed back where it belonged. 

But Thomas didn’t see how there’d be any putting this back. 

“We can have more than you’re allowing for,” Richard said, and the patience in his voice grated. 

“So what does that mean?” Thomas said, quietly, as if that might soften the words. 

It didn’t, and Richard didn’t pretend otherwise. He blinked, affected for the first time by the possibilities Thomas had kept in mind from the start. 

“It means we disagree.” And his voice shook even as he said: “For now, anyway.”

The smile he tried on didn’t do a thing to convince Thomas that he wasn’t terrified. 

It did, however, convince him that Richard was made of stronger stuff than he’d given him credit for. (Something he should have known—something he _did_ know if he stopped letting his fear make him forget). 

He could stand down, just a little, in the face of such assurance. 

“I don’t _disagree_ with you,” he admitted. “I’m worried.”

Richard’s smile made a worthier attempt at reaching his eyes. He leaned in closer to Thomas, who didn’t turn away. 

“Well, then you’re better off than me,” he said. “I’m scared to death. But we can manage, you and I. We’ll make a success of whatever we decide.”

He took Thomas’s cheek in hand when he kissed him, soft and without any urgency. As if he’d kissed him in the middle of a discussion on a film they’d both seen, or where they should go for dinner. 

“Do you think it can work?” Thomas murmured as Richard pulled away, his eyes still closed. “Or do you just want it to?”

Richard took a breath before answering, but that was in his nature. Thomas _liked_ that about him, he reminded his fraying nerves. He liked having someone who took care with the things he said and whether they were true. 

“I think it can work. And I know I want to be with you.”

Thomas—eyes still half-closed—pressed his forehead against Richard’s with a sigh.

“We don’t have to decide everything now,” Richard murmured. “We can’t. But if you could think about it. What you want, what you need to stay the same…”

“It doesn’t sound like we’ll have much of that,” Thomas said. Richard laughed. 

“I’m not asking us to go where no man’s gone before.”

“Just York.”

Richard ran a hand through his hair, pulling back so Thomas could have a full view of his teasing grin. 

“It’s grown on you.” 

_“You_ have, anyway.” Which made Richard blush. 

Thomas wasn’t in any hurry to disrupt the levity in the room, but there was more to say before they really and truly went back to talking about nothing. He took Richard’s hand in both his own, testing his own commitment to the words he was about to say. 

“I want the same thing. I do.”

He was immediately rewarded by a sensation that he’d made Richard just as happy as Richard made him. 

“And you’ll think about it?”

“I don’t have to _think_ about it,” Thomas said. “As long as we’re careful.”

“Am I ever anything but?”

A more complicated question than Richard would ever admit to, but Thomas was tired of playing the cautious one. It didn’t suit him...

“You’ll have to keep me in line, then,” he said with a smirk. “You know how I am when I’m decided about something…”

Which earned him a kiss that carried more suggestion than the last one. 

“Our own place,” Richard said before planting a kiss on his cheek. “We’re going to have such fun…” 

“You always say that.”

Another kiss, closer to his jaw. “And we always do.”


	3. 1933

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The place Thomas ends up working isn't named because I wanted enough plausible deniability to cover my "this is a fanfiction" level of research--however, it is based on a real institution in York, called The Retreat. It was formed by Quakers as a response to the injustices and inhumane treatment in regular asylums. Felt like a good fit!
> 
> Some mild content warnings for allusions to mental illness and Thomas's experience with conversion therapy, but in all...sweet in more ways than one. :p
> 
> Hope you enjoy! I have not decided if there will be one or two more chapters, but it will almost certainly be one or the other!

* * *

  
“You dropped this one, Mr. Barrow…” John Curtis held out a cricket ball, and Thomas shifted the equipment in his hands so he could pocket it.

“Thank you, Mr. Curtis. You go on ahead, catch up…” The rest of the afternoon group was already filing in, packing away their paints and closing up the novels they read on the grass, leaving behind kites and cricket balls and a feeling of general ease. 

Thomas still remembered the first time he’d felt it while walking the grounds—though it had been a morning group, then, and the sun had sparkled on a fresh dusting of snow that many patients seemed reluctant to disturb. It reminded Thomas of Downton during its time as a convalescent home. He had said so, during his interview, and he’d known from the spark in the chaplain’s eye that he’d said the right thing. 

“That’s it, Mr. Barrow, that’s it _exactly._ Convalescence, but for the mind.”

And if anyone understood the need for that...

Mr. Curtis shoved his hands in his pockets, taking a sigh before squinting up at the late afternoon sky. 

“I’m in no rush. Not on a day like today. Don’t you think I’m getting better?”

It took Thomas a moment to realize he meant his cricket game. 

“That you are,” he said breezily. “Once we get your shoulders pointing in the right direction, there won’t be any stopping you.”

In truth, John Curtis had more to boast about where his treatment was concerned. He’d arrived a few weeks after Thomas had, catatonic and needing constant supervision. He was preparing to leave in a few weeks, barring a relapse, and Thomas had no qualms about handing him the weighty silver lock for the shed as he undid the latch. 

“Your friend’s here,” Mr. Curtis said suddenly. “Mr. Ellis.”

And there Richard was, standing at the end of the yard—where ivy and a smattering of trees did a decent job of covering the brick wall that held them inside. 

Thomas grinned. “He is—which means it’s three. Well, knowing him, about ten after—”

“Thirteen after this time, Mr. Barrow,” Mr. Curtis laughed, tapping on his watch.

“Is that so?” Thomas held his hand out for the shed’s lock. “The bookshop must have a new window display…”

He nodded in Richard’s direction, head jerking toward Mr. Curtis, as if to say, “there’s just one more thing.” Richard would tease him for being even later than _he_ was, and then they’d be off home in time for their visitors. 

Phyllis-—that’s what he had to call her now, unless he wanted to take on the challenge that was _Mrs. Molesley_ —had already seen the house, just before Thomas had taken the great leap. But if anyone had told Thomas that Anna Bates would be coming to tea in _his home..._ he’d have called them daft and then found a way of punishing them for poking into his carefully concealed hopes. 

But things changed, and there it was: he would take his turn as host, and there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t come off. Not with Richard along for the ride. 

“You’re late,” Richard said as he approached (having left Mr. Curtis in capable hands). 

Thomas smiled. “You were late first.”

They were off, back down the hill towards the bus stop, Thomas professing his astonishment that Richard bothered making his way out when he just had to go back again. 

“I can get myself home, you know.” He never said it with enough force to be believed. 

“When it’s three in the morning, you can,” Richard laughed. “But I like it out here. Like seeing you work.”

Speaking of work...

“How’d Lizzie make out?”

Elizabeth and Richard Ellis were one year apart in age, and that seemed the most compelling difference between them. She was sharp, had dressed her share of duchesses before getting married, and seemed to thrive in the deep waters of possibility. 

She’d had a theory that the wealthy would be the first to bounce back from the economic slump, and when they did, they’d want the same nice things with a more modest price tag. 

“They’re learning to dress themselves, but I’ll give it another century before they decide to pick up a needle,” she said. It was the little things, the things it was such a pain for country houses to send clothes up to London for, that would have the aristocracy hankering for the days when they could just hand it off to their man or ladies’ maid. 

If they could have the old ways back for an afternoon, they _would_ , Lizzie promised. And if they could have their buttons fixed by someone who’d served royalty, they’d pay for that, too. 

It was the bet Lizzie had made, the bet she’d pushed Richard to take, and it had paid off much as she’d said it would. 

“Like a bandit,” Richard grinned. “She’s so clever...three days of work, and they’re paying train fare, too.”

“How’d she manage that?” Thomas asked as they clambered on the bus. 

“We aren’t servants,” Richard shrugged. “We write our own terms, and those are hers.” 

He was so good at it—at not flinching in the face of what he was owed. He wasn’t cowed by great men or rich people’s blustering or the indignity of having to prove he wasn’t lying about living in Buckingham Palace by summoning up facts on a whim. 

He got along in the world by seeing challenges as opportunities, and problems as cracks he could coax into being doorways. He made something of everything; he’d made something of them and the life they lived together, in spite of everything. 

Not for the first time that afternoon, Thomas found himself wanting to kiss him. He settled for leaning too hard into the bus’s next turn, nudging into Richard’s shoulder and meeting his eye with a grin. Richard raised an eyebrow, looking straight out the front window. 

“You haven’t asked about my cake,” he said in a low voice. 

“Thought you’d either tell me if it went well, or I shouldn’t ask because it didn’t.”

Apart from the vegetable patch and the spice garden, which were coming along nicely, neither Richard nor Thomas had landed on their feet when it came to fending for their own food. But Richard was determined to get the hang of the kitchen, and that meant that whatever was waiting at home would be ambitious (if it was nothing else). 

“It’s standing,” Richard said. “I’m proud of that, anyway.”

“But will it be edible, Mr. Ellis?”

He nudged Thomas back as the bus turned another corner. “We’ll find out when we eat it, won’t we, Mr. Barrow?”

It was a bit of a walk from the bus station to the house that—like most things in Thomas’s ever changing life—had come to them from Richard knowing someone. A friend of an uncle had needed to sell, and he hadn’t blinked at Richard admitting he intended to take on a boarder in the spare room. 

“You’d not be the first,” he’d said. Even Richard hadn’t been able to conjure up a guess as to whether he understood what was really meant. 

The house came at a bargain, but not without a catch. It needed a new trim, new curtains, new everything...Thomas felt guilty, taking a job that didn’t pay its fair share when there was so much _newness_ that needed saving for. 

“There’s more to life than that,” Richard had said. “I’m not worried about it. And you’re happy, aren’t you?”

He was, though it felt like asking for trouble, saying it out loud. Happy and useful and ready to welcome his friends to tea. 

Those things didn’t happen to Thomas Barrow, except now they _did._ And before he could quite believe it, their guests were hanging up their hats, inspecting every detail of the house with a pride and interest that Thomas hated for the first three minutes, until he’d convinced himself that no one was looking with the intent to find fault. 

“I know what’s in here…” Phyllis beamed upon noticing a biscuit tin on the sitting room table. “Your mother used to put out a tin just like it…”

“Lots of people do,” Thomas said, though he smiled as she gleefully took out a piece of the toffee inside. 

“And she cut it just like this, too,” she said, more to Anna than him (“my Mum’s always looked like she’d taken a hammer to it,” Anna joked). 

“Do you remember, Thomas?” she said. “She had to put it up so you wouldn’t steal it and spoil your dinner, and then you’d climb up wherever she’d put it anyway.”

Richard laughed aloud at that, and Thomas felt his cheeks going red. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, and he couldn’t say it wasn’t fair game. He’d been treated to a story or two of his own, living in York and getting to know Richard’s family. 

Richard wasn’t likely to meet Thomas’s father or sister, and he’d never have the chance to meet his mother...but as Thomas had learned for himself years ago, Phyllis could fill in more space than one might guess. 

“Fell off the counter-top and cracked my head, once,” Thomas admitted. “She had a fit; I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed for a week after…but she kept the toffee on the table after that. ‘If he makes himself sick enough times, he’ll learn his lesson’...she thought I was cleverer than I was.”

“The things I’m not told that explain everything,” Richard said with a smirk. 

Thomas couldn’t stop the wave of panic that came over him as Richard lay a hand on the small of his back, but he was surprised at how easily it subsided. There was always a fear—of going too far, of stepping forward with the assumption that you had more ground than you did—though that fear was fading fast when it came to Anna and Phyllis. 

They knew his situation—as did their husbands—and they accepted it in more than theory. And—apart from a predictably uncomfortable but well-meaning conversation with Molesley—Thomas hadn’t found that acceptance difficult to win. 

He was grateful to them and eager to keep them in his life, which made the resentment he felt as the visit continued an unwelcome guest indeed. 

“You should see Johnnie, he’s about up to here…” Anna chattered away over tea. “And they say boys go through their spurts later than girls, so I’m sure he’ll be a beanstalk…”

It wasn’t her fault—it wasn’t anyone’s fault, really. Even if the world were different, it would never be the same for him as it was for them. Not when it came to children. 

He’d waited longer than he should have to leave Downton because of the children, because he’d known he wasn’t likely to live in a house with any children in it again. 

He wouldn’t go back, not for anything. The life he had now was more worthwhile than any he’d had before. Still, there was a space in him that ached, a space that had been at times the only place he’d felt himself and now held nothing at all. 

Richard must’ve noticed the mood he was working himself into, but he left it until after their guests had left, after dinner, after he’d coaxed Thomas under the evening stars. The back of the house was fenced with posts just tall enough to discourage peeking over, and Richard kept a blanket near the back door for the grass. 

They lay back on it and looked up at the stars, and neither of them needed to ask what was the matter because Richard had known, almost from the start, what nestled in the center of Thomas’s chest. He’d learned—more quickly than Thomas had meant for him to—the lengths he’d gone to for the chance of plucking that desire from where it burrowed and finding a place it could grow into something real. 

He’d risked feeling nothing at all for that chance, and there was no dulling that kind of knowledge. It loomed over everything without being mentioned, though Richard brought it up in the stillness. 

“Anything might happen.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

“I mean it.” Richard turned on his side towards Thomas. “Did you think you’d ever be where we are now?”

Of course he hadn’t, he hardly believed it now. Even still...

Thomas closed his eyes. “That’s different.”

He didn’t protest the hand Richard reached across his chest, landing almost at his far shoulder. 

“It’s different now because it’s happened. Maybe—”

"—no,” Thomas said, too loudly. He looked over at Richard, who’d turned his head back to the sky. “No, this is different because it’s different. And I just have to learn to be at peace with that.”

Richard sighed, his head dropping so his nose brushed against Thomas’s arm. 

“Lizzie’s bringing Dorothy next week,” he murmured. “She adores you. I know it’s not…”

But there was no need to finish such a thought, nothing to be gained in talking of it anymore. Not when they were safe and settled and together, which was more than many people got—like them or not. 

“I’m happy,” Thomas said, because it was usually true. 

Richard leaned in closer. “I know. So am I.”

And why shouldn’t they be? Thomas closed his eyes again, taking in a deep breath of the chill breeze, letting it air out the gloom that had settled inside him. 

“You did a fine job with the cake.” Because that was true, too, and wasn’t that cause for celebration? They just might make their way through domestic life after all...

Richard hummed an agreement before lifting his head. “I thought it turned out well.”

“I knew it would.”

Richard took the bait, sitting up on his elbow, hand still on Thomas’s chest. “You did not.”

Thomas laughed, guiding him back down by his collar. 

“No, I didn’t,” he admitted before Richard quieted him with a kiss. 


	4. 1939

_“You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more, or—”_

As if anyone listening needed to be subjected to his excuses after being told the world was about to fall apart...

“Turn it off, would you?” Thomas said, running a hand across his face. 

Richard was staring at the wireless, his fingers gripping the arm of his chair. 

“I want to hear the rest.”

“What are you going to hear that’ll help anything?”

Richard didn’t respond, which Thomas begrudgingly admitted was a fair answer to an unfair question. 

“—fine. I’ll go,” he sighed. “Should be sleeping anyway, don’t know why I bothered…”

Because he’d thought there might be a chance, that’s why...he was turning into a fool. If this had happened when he was young, he’d have decided war was coming three months back, and he could be sleeping soundly before his night shift while Neville Chamberlain blithered on about trying his best. 

As it was, he wouldn’t sleep a wink, though he drew the curtains like he might. Pulled the covers up to his ears, closed his eyes tight, knowing the entire performance would come to nothing. 

He’d gotten used to sleeping without needing to fold his troubles away for the morning, and that came with a price when troubles came around. 

He didn’t open his eyes when the door creaked open, but he turned on his side towards Richard when he felt him settle on the bed. Richard’s feet were still on the floor, his back rigid. There was something restless in his stillness, which meant he was looking for the next foothold but still hadn’t found it.

The longer he took in finding it, the tighter the hold of the tension in the room. 

“What time do you go?” Richard asked, eyes on the dresser drawers on the far wall. 

“Seven.” Thomas tucked a hand under the pillow. “Don’t you have something in town this afternoon?”

Richard’s eyes never moved. He opened his mouth, closed it, then spoke:

“Housekeeper called—they’ve cancelled. They’ll send something for the trouble, but they can’t say when they’ll ask again.”

And wasn’t that just like the aristocracy...war was like everything else. All about money, and the rich were going to start holding onto their shares for dear life.

“Generous of them,” he said bitterly. 

“They have three sons.” Just enough condemnation in Richard’s voice to set Thomas’s teeth on edge. 

“They knew it was coming. We all did,” he said.

Richard closed his eyes in frustration, and Thomas traced his expression with an anxiety he wasn’t used to feeling. As if he knew Richard less than he did...or less than he thought he did, anyway.

“Sometimes you—” Richard stopped himself mid-sentence, and that too was something unfamiliar, something that made Thomas’s stomach drop. Richard was always so intentional, always so careful...and losing that security gave Thomas a sense of being in a free fall.

“—I what?” he sat up on his elbow, feeling heated but not sure whose fault it was just yet. 

“You don’t win anything by pretending you’re not bothered.”

He’d finished his sentence, at least, but his voice fluctuated too much for Thomas to believe he had a better handle on himself than a moment ago. 

Certainly, a Richard with his wits about him should have known better than to say _that..._

“When did I say I wasn’t bothered?” he snapped. “When you’re the one sitting down there, listening to the bloody wireless like it’s going to tell you anything except everyone we know’s going to die all over again—”

“—don’t.” Richard’s voice seemed to echo unnaturally against the walls, or maybe Thomas was sending himself into a panic because the man he loved didn’t _sound_ like that. Didn’t look so young, so unsteady, so completely unprepared for what might happen. 

“Don’t,” he said again, though Thomas hadn’t so much as breathed since his first interruption.

Thomas knew what was going to happen before Richard's face crumpled. 

“I’m sorry,” Thomas murmured, over and over again, even though Richard had tucked himself into his arms the moment Thomas made to offer them. He was shaking more than he was crying, and Thomas could hear Richard’s heart thudding against his own pounding chest. 

“...I know.” Richard held Thomas tighter about the neck as Thomas kissed his head. “I know.”

Thomas began to notice the rhythm in Richard’s breaths—three in, three out, if he counted slowly, the way he imagined Richard might be doing inside his head. Five in, five out, if he counted more to his own taste. 

In any case, it was a pattern, and Thomas could feel Richard regaining a hold of his stillness. 

“If you want to listen to the wireless, I‘ll—” 

Richard buried his face in Thomas’s neck. “I don’t want to listen to anything.” 

Thomas counted three in, three out for over a minute before Richard spoke again. 

“Why can’t they leave us be?” 

Thomas ran a hand through Richard’s hair; it was turning silver at the temples.

If _Thomas_ hadbelieved that the world might change its mind at the last minute—cynical and weary as he was—how much more had Richard—who as long as Thomas had known him had lived as if the world might be reasoned with—believed it? 

“We should eat,” Thomas said, producing a sigh from Richard. “I’ll make—listen—I’ll make something—”

“—you’re supposed to be sleeping—”

“—I’m not good at doing what I’m supposed to, and you should know it by now,” Thomas said, smiling at how Richard nuzzled against his skin. “I’ll make something to eat...we have that bread the Hendersons sent over—”

“—God, Charlie—”

“—Charlie Henderson is hardly seventeen and isn’t allowed to run to the end of the road, doctor’s orders,” Thomas said, not about to let the conversation get away from him. “He’ll be just fine.”

Richard took another deep breath before lifting his head from Thomas’s shoulder; Thomas kept his hand in his hair, letting it rest at the back of his head. 

“I didn’t mean to say that you weren’t bothered—”

“—I know,” Thomas murmured.

“I couldn’t do it again if you weren’t here.”

“You could.” It wasn’t as if they’d be called again, anyway...though Thomas wasn’t about to say anything like that aloud. Not to Richard, who was two years younger and had never taken a bullet through his hand.

A change in the rules...that was all it would take...Thomas shook the realization out of his mind.

What would it help, to worry about that now? 

“I couldn’t have.” Richard had found his stillness—it sat in his eyes and comforted Thomas as it had since the first day they’d met. “You didn’t know me then. I couldn’t do it again.”

As if Thomas had been any better...but Richard had held the evidence of that enough times. 

It was them being together that made the difference, that would have to see them through this and everything else. 

They’d promised each other that. 

“Well, it’s a good thing you found me then, isn’t it?” 

For today, Richard’s smile was enough. 


	5. 1946

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the conclusion to this story!
> 
> This is going to go back and forth between letters from the past and a present timeline that takes place in 1946. 
> 
> Just because it's been a minute since she was referenced--Dorothy is Richard's niece mentioned in the 3rd chapter!

August 20, 1911

Dear,

You tell me to be careful, but you always write again. What am I to do, when faced with such a contradiction? You can’t expect me to choose less when more is offered. It isn’t in my nature, and I don’t think it’s in yours. 

You’re trying to scare me away with all your talk of America and heiresses, but I happen to be perfectly content to rub shoulders with both. It would suit me, I think. More than my life here. We already know we suit each other, so it seems to me you’re only adding to a scale that’ll tip in our favor. 

You think I don’t understand the terms, and I do. I intend to be so very patient and content and easy. You’ll see if you give me a chance to be. 

Don’t you think it’s funny? The rest of the world plodding on as it does, and we’re the only interesting parts. The only ones daring for any excitement, doing anything against what we’re told. 

You must promise to think of me when things get dull. I always think of you. 

\--T

* * *

**1946**

The sun was high in the sky—it’d be noon before Thomas got back to the house, which Richard would tease him for. 

Still, Mickey’s story about being courted by a gentleman in London was worth hearing the end of, even if it meant dragging their feet down the path. 

The younger man had been renting from Mrs. Shaw for six months, and he’d been coming to cricket with Thomas for going on four. They’d learned they could speak openly with each other six weeks ago, and already Thomas believed they were both made better by it. Mickey looked at Thomas and Richard as if they were figures in some legend, a kind of Fair Folk who kept a cottage and a garden and complained of leaks in the roof that they wanted a younger man to fix. 

For Thomas’s part, he felt that his walks with Mickey were an opportunity to reckon with the mistakes of his own youth. He could be the sort of guide Thomas himself had never happened upon—a man who _understood_ , but still knew better. 

Sometimes, Mickey even listened to him...though Thomas wasn’t sure this would prove to be one of those times. 

“So you don’t know his name?” Thomas asked, frowning. 

“I know his name!” Mickey laughed, but Thomas could hear the anxiety in it. “Just not the whole thing.”

“Then you know _a_ name…” Thomas said. “You’ve no way of checking if it’s _his.”_

 _Don’t be a spoil-sport..._ the lad had a right to be young, as they all had been. And in the grand scheme of things, an affair with a man who said his name was “Adam” when it was really “John” wouldn’t hurt anything that couldn’t heal. 

“I don’t think he’d lie.” Mickey looked undeterred. “He’s sincere; I like that. And he takes care of me—put me up somewhere and everything.”

Which really only meant that he had money...and more than an average need to keep everything neat and tidy. 

But neither of those things meant he wasn’t nice enough, so Thomas held his tongue.

“Just keep your eyes open, that’s all I’ll say…”

Mickey shook his head, squinting up at the clouds. “Thought you were a romantic, Mr. Barrow.” 

“Only when it’s worth the time to be.” Thomas stopped in front of Mrs. Shaw’s aging brick house. “I’ll see you Tuesday, if you’ve not been carried off by then?”

Mickey went pink at the ears—he was a better man than Thomas had been, he’d do fine on his own, really—and he paused before starting towards the door. 

“You don’t think I’m being very foolish, do you?”

“Not _very,”_ Thomas quipped. “But you’d know better than I would. If he’s as good as you say--”

“—he is. Even if it doesn’t...well, we could always be friends.” 

And _now_ Thomas worried…

“I trust him,” Mickey continued, with such conviction that Thomas knew he was better leaving it be for the time. 

“That’s all you can do.”

No one could be convinced into loyalty if they didn’t want to be; love and friendship and understanding were given on a whim and could be retracted at any moment. 

It was madness, to trust in anything that could be so freely taken away. Except there wasn’t any other choice but to do it. People couldn’t get on by themselves—not for very long. 

He’d rather Mickey learned that than anything else. 

“He wants to come up here and see me,” Mickey added, perhaps as a way to smooth the wrinkles in Thomas’s brow. “He said he’s always in York—knows someone here who helped bring him up and’s just like us.”

Something about the way he said it —“helped bring him up’—made Thomas straighten about the shoulders. He’d heard it before, not two weeks ago, from a recently returned George Crawley. 

But he’d _never_ said—

“—and what name did he give you, did you say?”

Mickey raised a teasing eyebrow. “What does it matter, if it isn’t real?” He sighed at Thomas’s unrelenting straight face. “Alright, he said his name’s George. Mean anything to you?” 

So it was all true, and Mickey knew better than he did…

And George—

“How could it?” Thomas said. “You could throw a stone in any direction and hit a George.”

_But not this one…_

Maybe the world was finding its way to being a better place, after all. 

* * *

September 2, 1924

Jimmy,

That was quick of you! I knew Downton was cursed somehow...making you spend your best years without anything to show for it. She seems lovely—and I can’t think you’re sorry that she’s so decided about you early on. 

It was good of you to tell me—I’d started to think you’d fallen off the face of the earth. It’s mad, seeing someone every day for years and years, and then suddenly they’re gone. I don’t think it’s right—though I’m sure you’d never trade it, especially now. 

I hope you’re happy—though what my hope’s worth, I couldn’t tell you at the moment. I seem to have less credit than I thought with whoever’s in charge. 

You’re busy, I know, and you won’t have time to write. But if you ever did, I’d welcome it. I’m not too proud to say so. I used to be, but I suppose I need more than I did before. 

Faithfully,

Thomas 

* * *

“—he never said a thing to me,” Thomas said, taking off his cap and shading his eyes, kneeling beside Richard in the grass.

“Perhaps he means to,” Richard replied. “These things take time.” 

Dorothy had to work Saturdays, so baby Harold was theirs for the whole afternoon. Pudgier and more interesting than he’d ever been, he toddled and toppled over in the grass, giggling all the while. Thomas snatched him up, straightening the wide-brimmed cap his mother made Richard promise he wouldn’t let Harold take off in the sun. 

“Alright, Harold: where do the beans grow, do you know?” he said, after sitting Harold down in front of the vegetable patch. 

Harold reached for Thomas’s hand instead. Richard—who was pulling weeds—laughed. 

“He wants you to do it for him.”

Sure enough, Harold tugged Thomas’s hand onto his lap before blinking up at him, ready for Thomas to start the game up again. 

“Here…” Thomas sighed, keeping Harold’s hand in his own as he pointed. “Is that where the beans grow?”

“Yes!” Harold clapped his hands together, taking Thomas’s hand along for the ride. 

“He’s incorrigible; you’ve trained him well,” Richard joked, moving to Thomas’s side. Before Thomas could open his mouth to protest, Richard caught Harold’s attention, holding out his own hand:

“Can you see any tomatoes, Harold?” 

But Harold didn’t reach for Richard’s gloved hand, instead pointing a definitive finger at the ripening tomatoes all on his own. 

“That’s right…” Richard cooed, before grinning at Thomas. “It looks like _he’s_ trained _you._ ”

Thomas looked down at Harold, bouncing him on his lap. “Do you see how he bullies me?”

But he let Richard kiss him on the cheek anyway. 

Harold reached for Richard with an imploring babble that made use of one of Harold’s favorite words: _my._ It worked—he received a kiss on both cheeks before returning the favor in kind. 

Richard beamed—his grand-nephew looked like an Ellis, and he was starting to walk and talk and love like one, too. All warm and happy and at ease with the world...

They had him to themselves every Saturday afternoon, and it was always enough to keep Thomas smiling through the week. 

“He’s the sweetest thing that ever drew breath, I swear it…” Richard murmured, clasping Harold’s hand in one of his own. “Aren’t you?”

Harold laughed, and Thomas kissed the top of his cap. 

“He knows it, too.”

* * *

November 28, 1925

Dear Miss Baxter,

You didn’t ask my opinion, but can I give it anyway? I’ve known Mr. Molesley a long while, and I don’t think he’s in the habit of expressing himself as well as he means to. I understand him in that respect (and only in that respect, I think, though if he’s a friend to you I have no quarrel with him). Ask him outright what he means, and I’m sure he’d be happy to tell you. No one’s ever accused him of being withholding...

You want to know how I’m getting on, and I don’t know how to answer the question. I don’t feel as if I’m “getting on” at all. It’s all at a standstill as far as I’m concerned. 

I’m trying to be the sort of person I want to be, but these aren’t the people I want to be it for. They wouldn’t notice if I stood on my head while serving.

I should have tried harder when it mattered, and I’ve no one to blame but myself. Still, at least I get my letters answered. That’s something. They’ve asked me to the wedding, too, though I know that’s your doing. 

I hope they’ll give me the time—though if they don’t, I have a little money put away. Maybe I’ll hire a boy from the village to wear my livery and see if they notice any different. 

Try not to worry too much about me. 

Your friend,

Thomas 

* * *

Thomas stopped short at seeing the parcel on the table.

“What’s this?”

Richard helped Harold take off his cap, setting it next to his own hat on the countertop. 

“I’d forgotten...it came this morning, just after you left. I didn’t recognize the name. Thought it might be an old friend.” 

But if he had a friend in London, it was news to Thomas…

It took him the better part of a minute to remember the name, and even longer to muster up the courage to see what was inside the parcel. 

A folded note sat atop a bundle of letters, and Thomas opened it in shaking hands, his eyes glazing over the first few sentences, as if he knew what they would say without reading them. 

But then the note went on past his imagination, and his curiosity made use of his senses: 

_...there’s no reason for me to keep them. It felt wrong to burn anything up, so soon after it’s happened._

_It seems like a lifetime ago, since being at Downton. Everything’s changed. I hope life’s not been too hard on you. It used to be, didn’t it?_

_If you’re ever in London, I wouldn’t be sorry to see you. It’d be nice to feel young again. I’ve seen more of the world, and I understand it better. That’s what happens, isn’t it? But sometimes there are things you’d like to do over._

_I don’t mind saying I’d like to shake your hand again._

Thomas dropped the note back on top of the pile of letters—God, had he really written so many? He couldn’t bear to think of what they said, of why they’d been kept all these years, after everything that had happened—

“—what is it?” Richard asked, the question innocent—as they always were and always would be, because he didn’t _know_ the man who had written these letters. 

“It’s rubbish,” Thomas mumbled, folding the wrapping back around. “Why he thought I’d—”

“—Thomas.” Softly, waiting patiently for Thomas to work himself back into the room, because he _did_ know the man standing before him. 

“They’re letters,” Thomas said, obtuse on purpose. “Someone’s died, and they had letters from me, and someone else sent them back.”

Richard waited for a beat, but Thomas wasn’t about to answer questions that hadn’t been properly asked. 

“Who?” he finally asked. And his smile wasn’t enough to stop Thomas from feeling ill. “I promise I won’t be jealous.”

If only it were that...if only it were anything Thomas could ever think of laughing about. 

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “I don’t want to read them.”

“Can I read them, then?” He sounded as if he were asking a favor. 

Thomas wanted to say no—if this had happened even ten years before, he might have. 

But what good could it do, now, to let something like this come between them? 

“I won’t stop you,” he said. “But it’s a lot of nonsense.”

* * *

July 9, 1916

Dear Miss O’Brien,

I’ve sat down to write this three times, and every time I’m bothered by someone wanting me to do something that’s not my job...there’s such a thing as being relied upon too much, I’ll say that. They’d all laugh at that, back at the house, even though they did the same thing. Does William know how to stand on his own two feet, yet?

He’d learn it quick enough here. I feel the strangest way—as if everything before now were a dream. I don’t say it to be soft, but you should know the truth of it: I’m starting to forget what rooms went to which halls, which maids liked which bloke from the village. I know it used to make sense, but I don’t remember how it ever could have. 

On no account do I mean you should stop telling me what’s going on over there—I want to collect all the pieces I can. Maybe when this is all over, I can shift them together and they’ll make sense again. You never know; I might need them to. 

So you must do your part for the war effort, and be sure to let me know if Daisy gets a new dancing partner. 

I think Lady Sybil will be a fine nurse—she sometimes gives you such a look in the dining room, and you know if it was just you and her, you’d have a proper laugh. The men’ll like her for that. 

I won’t answer your question because it’s a silly one—you know better than anyone what the answer is. Why’d you think I’m writing soppy things to you of all people? You’re probably laughing at me at the table, showing it all off to Mrs. Hughes and the rest. ‘Look at Thomas now, wishing he were back here with us.’ 

I’d like to see any of you switch places with me. But isn’t that just my life story? 

Don’t worry about me. It won’t do any good. 

\--Thomas

* * *

Richard sat back against the headboard next to Thomas, his face betraying nothing. 

“Harold’s down for a nap,” he said. “He’s so easy...he didn’t get that from Dorothy.”

Thomas couldn’t bring himself to feign any interest at the moment. His mind was miles away, whole decades in the past, watching himself move through the world in a way he could only just barely understand.

Richard—thankfully—noticed. 

“I read some of the letters,” he admitted. “I’m sorry she’s died—I know you were good friends, for a time.”

A generous interpretation, but Thomas couldn’t bear, just now, to unpack all the reasons he now believed they’d never _really_ been friends at all. 

“Don’t be, I’ve not heard from her since she left in the night.”

He almost said ‘ and good riddance to her,’ but something about it spooked him...she’d have teased him for that. 

Had she known how much he’d needed her, or had she been too selfish to guess? Thomas couldn’t decide whether either answer would soothe the knot in his stomach. 

“And Alfred?”

“Her nephew. Worked at the house as a footman, left it to work as a chef.”

 _We’re never going to visit him in London, if that’s what you’re wondering..._ though even as Thomas thought it, he wondered if it were true. Alfred had been amenable, when it came to it. 

Most people were, given enough time. 

She’d kept the letters...

“Was I sufficiently humiliating for you?” Thomas quipped, shoving the thought to the back of his mind. 

Richard didn’t smile, though he took Thomas’s hand in his. They were rougher, now, than they’d been when they’d first met. He’d had such soft, lovely hands...manicured and put together, like everything else about Mr. Richard Ellis. 

He didn’t miss those hands, or how nervous he’d been the first few times they’d reached for him. It felt better by far to be understood. 

“It was difficult.” Richard ran his thumb across the back of Thomas’s hand. “I could hear you in them, wanting something so badly. And I love you so very much. You know that?”

 _Perhaps he might have loved me even then..._ if anyone could have. For some reason, the thought made him want to laugh, a bubbling over of relief. 

The man in the letters didn’t have to worry, though he would—so much, in all the wrong ways—and it would all be fine anyway. 

Someone would love him, and the rest of it wouldn’t matter. 

“It’s a bit late for doubting, now,” he said, and his smile brought one to Richard’s face as well. 

“I hope so.” He squeezed Thomas’s hand before pressing it to his lips. 

Thomas took a page from Harold’s book and returned the favor. 

“I love you too, you know.” 

Richard’s grin hadn’t changed since the day they’d met. 

“Oh, I know it…”

Believing that meant just as much. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
